


Five Times John Jaqobis Needed A Drink

by LoveChilde



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Johnny's complicated life, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, spoilers up to the end of season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:58:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5644912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveChilde/pseuds/LoveChilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...And one time Pree needed one as well. A look at the relationship between a man with a complicated life, and his favorite bartender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times John Jaqobis Needed A Drink

**Author's Note:**

> None of them are mine, whaddaya know. Spoilers up to the finale, and many assumptions about before the finale but generally canon-compliant. My thanks to [Hagar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar) for beta'ing this one.

**One**

Johnny limped into the first bar he saw, and collapsed on a stool, aching from his toes to the top of his head. Even his hair hurt. 

“I need a drink.” 

The bartender gave him a flat look. “No, really?”

Johnny rolled his eyes and winced. 

The bartender filled a shot glass and slid it across the bar to him. “You look like you got worked over pretty well.” 

“Yeah, well.” Johnny knocked the drink back in one gulp. “Guess I’ll know better than to try to steal a ship while the owner’s still in it, next time.”

The bartender smirked. “He beat the crap out of you and dumped you here?”

“No… _She_ hired me, right after she shot me.” He was still limping a little, even though it had been just a graze, and she’d been practical enough to shoot him in the leg, rather than do anything that’d harm his hands and arms. “She’s getting the paperwork to register us both as Killjoys.” 

“Why hire you, if you tried to steal her ship?”

Ah, a skeptic. Johnny gave him his smuggest look. “Because I was the best damn engineer she could get.” That wasn’t even a lie, technically: he _was_ a good engineer, and he _had_ been the only one available on the spot, and he was willing to try to talk to her, which no sane or employed engineer would’ve done at the time. 

“Looks like you had more luck than brains, then.” 

“Yeah, I’m not so sure of that,” he sighed. He’d gotten over being shot pretty quickly, especially since the ship had better medical equipment than any he’d seen ground-side, but ever since he’d been hired…”It’s like she doesn’t trust me. She keeps testing out whether I’m a threat, and she does it by trying to kill me and seeing how well I defend myself.” He was whining, he knew it, but it had happened five times in three days and he hadn’t slept in at least that long. He was exhausted. And he hurt.

“So far, either you’re defending yourself well enough, or she’s not that good of a killer.” A second shot slid across the bar to him with those words, and Johnny did a little mental maths, decided he had enough joy to cover it, and drank, choking only a little on a bitter chuckle.

“She’s a great killer. She keeps almost doing it, and then stopping when she sees she _can_ do it. _Almost_ breaking my neck, _almost_ strangling me, _almost_ stabbing me various places.” He’d acquired most of the bruises evading her. “But I think she’s finally satisfied that I can’t take her in a fight even on a good day. Which means she’ll hopefully stop now.” She was getting their Killjoy registration papers, which meant they were partners now, and partners didn’t kill each other. “Nice place you got here.” Enough whining from him, anyway.

“Thanks. I’m Pree,” the bartender didn’t offer his hand and Johnny didn’t either.

“John Jaqobis. If she doesn’t kill me in the next couple of days, I’ll come by again.”

He paid for his drinks and left, looking for his new partner. Partners didn’t kill each other.

**Two**

It’s a couple of weeks later that Johnny dropped into a chair across from Pree again. He’d been in once or twice during those weeks, with his partner, which was enough for Pree to remember him.

“You’re looking kinda hunted, honey. Your partner still trying to kill you? ‘Cause I think I’d have given up and left by now, if someone was that dedicated to almost killing me.” 

“No, no, I think she gave up on that after she had to use the regenerator on me and I was still out for four hours,” Johnny grimaced at the memory. “She pretty much accepted that I’m absolutely not a threat to her and she can take me blindfolded, with one hand behind her back.” And no, he wasn’t at all bitter about that. Johnny could defend himself and hold his own in a fight, but he knew that Dutch was in a league of her own, and now he knew why, too. If fighting like she did meant he’d have to go through what she had, he was just fine with being a passable fighter and no more. He stifled a yawn. “What she’s doing now is sort of worse, to be honest.”

Pree raised an eyebrow. “What could be worse than trying to kill you?”

Johnny looked over his shoulder and then sighed deeply. “She’s trying to sleep with me,” he explained, his voice a little lower than it had been. 

Pree’s other eyebrow joined the first one, and he gave Johnny a look that clearly indicated that he was nobody’s fool. “How is that a bad thing, exactly? I mean- you do have functioning eyes, right?”

“I do.”

“And your other parts, they’re in good working order?”

Johnny huffed. He should have known nobody’d get it. “My parts work just fine, thank you.”

“And you _do_ go for women, I’ve seen you.” Pree was still looking at him like he was some interesting alien bug. “So, what’s your problem with sleeping with her?”

“She’s my partner.” It was the best reasoning Johnny could give, and he knew it wasn’t enough, so he tried to explain further. “Look - sex is fun, and easy, and a good time, right? For Dutch, it isn’t. It’s - like a mission. A way to manipulate people. She doesn’t sleep with people she likes. She sleeps with people she _doesn’t_ like, but wants to get something from. And she’s - persistent. Climb-into-my-bunk-naked persistent. I want to be her friend, and her partner, and not more than that. Definitely not her target or prey. Sex with her would complicate things like I can’t even describe.” He was exhausted, after evading her for several days. It wasn’t that she wasn’t gorgeous and sexy - she was, but she was also dangerous, and Johnny wasn’t attracted to that kind of danger. And she was also broken, damaged in ways he was only starting to see, and he knew he’d never be able to explain to her how normal people behaved if he went along with what she seemed to want. “I don’t like complicated.”

“Oh honey.” Pree poured him a shot expertly. “You’re partnering with her. You _love_ complicated.”

 

**Three**

The problem was that being partners through the RAC was couched in terms that were very much like marriage. That was where the trouble started. Well, that and the fact that Dutch had no fucking idea what human behavior in society entailed, which Johnny sometimes forgot, when things were more or less normal for a few days and nothing reminded him that Dutch wasn’t like other people.

“We aren’t really married!” Johnny pulled away sharply from Dutch, and gave a mortified, apologetic look to the sexer who’d just been shoved away quite rudely. “We’re partners. That’s for business, not pleasure! Oh - hell, could we not do this right here?” They were in the middle of the bar, and Dutch gave him a blank look until he indicated the rest of the patrons, all of whom were staring at them, with a sweep of his hand.

“Oh.” she looked around, and shrugged. “We can go back to the ship if you’d like.” 

“Yeah.” he kept the resentment out of his voice with an effort, and shot one last longing glance at the girl he’d been planning on spending the afternoon with. “Let’s go.”

They went, and two hours later Johnny reappeared, alone, looking like death warmed over. Pree had a drink poured for him before he even sat down. 

“What did she do now? You hiding bruises under there?”

“What? No.” Johnny scowled at him. Dutch wasn’t like that - not anymore, anyway. She’d stopped hitting him right before they became partners. “She just… I guess I surprised her.” 

“She didn’t expect you to want to have sex with anyone, since you don’t want to do it with her?” Her reaction to Johnny trying to engage the sexer had made that pretty clear. “Dara’s still available by the way, if you’re interested.” 

Johnny snorted and downed his shot in a single gulp. “After the conversation I just had, I doubt I’ll ever be interested again. How she could have-” he paused, because Pree didn’t know much about Dutch’s past, and private was private, after all. Instead of finishing the sentence, he shook his head. “Turns out she didn’t really give up on me, so much as decide that I was either entirely without a sex drive, or saving myself for marriage - and since the RAC contract-”

“-is pretty much marriage, you’re fucked now.” Pree finished and refilled his glass casually. “Or more accurately, not fucked.” 

“I think I explained it well enough, now. I _think_ I got through to her. I mean, how could I have expected to have to explain to a grown woman that sleeping with people you like is a great thing, but isn’t a necessity? That you can like someone and sleep with them, or not sleep with them if you wanted to, just like you can not like someone, and not sleep with them.” Johnny buried his face in his hands and growled, frustrated and tired and confused, as was pretty much the standard since meeting Dutch. “At least I think I made it real damn clear that being partners didn’t mean we weren’t allowed to have sex with other people, and that my not wanting to sleep with her isn’t an insult, or a power-play, or some kind of complex.”

“I think jury’s still out about the complex, Jaqobis.” Somehow, Johnny’s glass had emptied again and Pree poured him a third shot. “I still think you’re insane.”

“Thank you.” All the biting sarcasm he couldn’t let out around Dutch was concentrated on those two words. “I’m an idiot, is what I am. But she’s a good partner. Mostly.” It was a better life than he’d had before, even with all the added complications. They worked well together. Besides, he’d made a huge amount of progress on teaching her how to behave like a person in only a few weeks, he figured he might as well continue.

Pree sighed and shook his head. “You’re a lost cause. And you’re paying for all these drinks.”

**Four**

“Johnny, you okay back there? You haven’t moved in a couple hours.” Pree nudged Jonny’s bar stool gently with his foot, jostling him awake. 

“Wha-? Oh. Uh. Yeah, I’m good.” Despite almost falling from the stool, Johnny caught himself and rubbed his eyes. “No sign of Dutch yet, huh?”

“No-o...Her orders were to keep ‘em coming. She’s exhausted four of my best guys so far, and one of my very best ladies,” Pree seemed unaccountably amused by the situation, and Johnny groaned miserably. “Bad break up?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know it’d be this bad, though. Three days is a new record.” 

It had taken over a year, but he’d finally reached a point with Dutch where she was more or less able to connect to people without only seeing them as assets, targets or enemies. Now, after three years of being partners, she was his best friend, they worked together smoothly, he could read her tiniest cues - and she could do the same for him, and cared about him, which was a much more significant achievement. This newfound ability to form relationships not based on calculated business dealings came with certain side effects, though: Dutch could form relationships, but they never lasted long. And she rarely took a break up well. And her main way for getting over a guy was a whole lot of casual but very determined sex, in an attempt to wipe the offending ex-boyfriend entirely from her system. 

Johnny guessed this one took a lot of wiping. Dutch had left him at the bar with a ‘wait here, give me a few hours’ - three days earlier. He’d broken up seven brawls, been fed six meals, and jogged back to Lucy to shower and change very quickly twice, and he was starting to lose patience. 

“I still think you’re out of your mind. You could just go back to your ship, she’ll know where to find you.” Pree shook his head again.

Johnny shrugged. He was too tired to move, anyway. “You know how she is when she comes out of these sprees. She’ll need a hand getting back.” He’d spent so long teaching Dutch that casual, no strings sex was okay; that she could be safe even when she wasn’t playing a game, that he could hardly begrudge her these occasional disappearances. 

Three days was really pushing the limit, though. 

“You’ve earned yourself a drink, I think.” This time Pree poured out the good stuff, stronger and smoother than Johnny usually ordered. “And I’m putting it on her tab.”

Johnny sipped carefully, savoring and nursing the glass. Looked like he still had a long wait ahead. 

 

**Five**

At the look on Johnny’s face, Pree didn’t even ask before pouring him a double. “What’s Dutch done now?”

“Nothing,” Johnny threw himself onto a chair almost violently and drank too quickly, choking a little. “Dutch hasn’t done anything. She’s just fine. Nothing to do with this.” 

‘This’ seemed to indicate the dark circles under his eyes, the unfortunate tangle of his hair, and the fact that he looked - not for the first time - like shit. Johnny supposed that Pree could be forgiven for thinking that it was Dutch’s fault again.

“So, what then? You’ve broken someone’s heart? Stolen someone’s ship again?” Pree leaned on the bar curious but also strangely sympathetic. 

Johnny rested his head on one hand and stared at the bar, his face heating up. “You’ll laugh if I tell you.”

“I could use a laugh. Go on.” That tone of voice was irresistible to clients, especially ones who were already on shaky emotional ground, and Pree used it shamelessly. Johnny heaved a deep sigh.

“Lucy’s angry with me.”

Pree blinked. “Lucy.”

“Yeah.”

“Lucy, your _ship_. Your ship’s AI, Lucy. Not some other Lucy who’s a real person?”

“Hey, Lucy’s totally a person! And I hurt her feelings and insulted her and now she’s mad at me, and I’ve tried to apologize but she ignores me, and-”

“Whoa, whoa.” Pree held up two hands in the face of the flood of words. “Start from the beginning. How can you hurt a ship’s _feelings_?”

“I promised Lucy, when I grabbed her - she used to belong to a guy who didn’t understand ships, and didn’t understand AIs. He didn’t think she was a person, treated her like an object - she’s not an object, Pree. Ships aren’t.” Johnny knew that he could get pretty emotional on the subject, and tried to rein himself in despite four days on very little sleep. “Just - take my word for it, okay? She’s a person, she has wants and needs and acting against those hurts her.” 

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

At least Pree didn’t sound judgmental, where Dutch had pretty much snickered and said that the ship was his to deal with, as he was her favorite. “Anyway, when I grabbed Lucy, I was the first one who’d ever told her in advance when I did something to her systems - a fix, an upgrade, an override. I _asked_ before I installed things, I always do. I respect her, you know?” 

“Alright…” Pree’s tone was clearly a question more than actual agreement. “So?”

“So last week, we needed to get out of a tight fix, fast,” Johnny explained, dejected. “I had to override some of her secondary functions, shut down redundant and non-critical systems for extra speed, and I put a lot of strain on her engines. The kind of strain that meant I sort of busted them, by the time we got out of there. But I fixed it! The problem is, I didn’t have time to walk her through it or ask permission, people were shooting at us, you know? And now she’s pissed off and won’t talk to me.”

“The… ship.” Pree’s eyes narrowed, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure he’d heard right, and hadn’t lost his mind. “She’s angry because you used her wrong?”

“I broke her trust. We had a good relationship, I really lo- like her, okay? And I _apologized_ , and fixed all the damage, and bought her new hardware, and she still won’t forgive me. I haven’t had hot water in a week. She let some kind of space bugs into my favorite snacks, I get locked in my room at least once a day because the door ‘sticks’, she starts music up just as I finally manage to fall asleep… and all Dutch does about it is _laugh_. The women in my life are out to drive me crazy.”

There was silence for a long moment. Pree had no idea what to say, and preferred to stay quiet until he was sure he wouldn’t laugh, himself. However, Johnny’s plaintive tone convinced him that this was no laughing matter. 

“She has to forgive me soon, right?” 

Pree poured another shot and shrugged. “She’s a ship, Jaqobis. Who can tell what she’ll do? You really know how to pick ‘em.”

 

**And One**

After it all ends, after the terror is over, after they’re safely on board and away from the bombs flattening Old Town, but before the worry and horror and grief have a chance to curdle in Johnny’s stomach and feed the growing sense of despair, he draws Pree away from the main cargo hold and towards his room. Lucy has the controls, and they aren’t going anywhere specific yet. They have time. 

Pree had been - well, pretty much amazing, up to that point: he’d helped to herd people along, been steady and reliable and solidly certain that they’d get out of there, even when none of them had been sure of it. The others had followed his lead, and all in all it had been a pretty successful evacuation. Now, Johnny finds him on the floor, slightly removed from the others, his expression blank and exhausted, maybe even a little shocky. His life and livelihood were in Old Town, and Johnny guesses it’s starting to sink in a little. So he reaches down and pulls Pree up, and away, to his room. 

It isn’t until Johnny pushes him gently to sit on his bed that Pree seems to notice what’s happening, and quirks an eyebrow. “Is this really an appropriate time?”

“For a drink? I can’t think of a better time or reason, to be honest,” Johnny pulls a dusty bottle from a secret compartment in the floor, with two tumblers which are only slightly cleaner. He glances into them and give them a cursory wipe with the edge of his shirt. Pree huffs a breath and extracts them from Johnny’s hand, wiping them more thoroughly on his own shirt. 

“I don’t know…” He almost smiles, but it’s a pale and tired shadow of his usual expression, “You’ve had some good reasons to drink, in the time we’ve known each other.”

“Hm. Point.” Johnny nods slowly.

“There was Dutch.”

“There was Dutch, _a lot_.”

“There was Lucy.”

“Not as often. Then there was D’avin, I guess.”

“There was Dutch _and_ D’avin.”

“Gah, don’t remind me.” He’s made his peace with it, sort of, maybe, and anyway, thinking about D’avin is dangerous, because Johnny doesn’t know where D’avin is, and thinking about it too hard may lead to him falling apart, and it’s too soon for that. “Plenty of reasons to drink.” But this one is somehow worse. Pree puts the tumblers down on the bed between them, and Johnny uncorks the bottle. 

“That one of mine?”

“Nope. Got it on some run through Qresh. Was saving it for a special occasion. I was… hoping it would be a happier occasion.”

Pree’s face crumples, just for a moment, before he pulls himself together and nods his silent agreement. Johnny fills both tumblers to the brim, and they raise them. 

“To only having good reasons to drink,” Johnny suggests.

Pree shakes his head, a tiny motion, and corrects the toast, “to Old Town.”

“To Old Town.”

Glass touches glass, and for a moment, they both feel just a little better.


End file.
